Where do you draw the boundaries for your relationships? Whom do you let in, and whom do you keep out?

Sometimes, we draw the lines too loosely. Solomon observed: “A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Proverbs 18:24). In Hebrew the phrase “many comparisons” and the word “ruin” come from the same root. It is a picture of hardening our hearts toward God’s design for our relationships. This often occurs when we hang around those who entice us to sin in our areas of weakness.

Still other times, we draw the lines too tightly, only wanting to be around those who mimic our beliefs, so that we feel comfortable. However, Paul continually communicated that we should make the most of every opportunity to reach outsiders (Colossians 4:5-6; 1 Corinthians 5:10; 9:22). Otherwise, we risk leveraging every relationship for our selfish benefit.

What would happen if you would surrender your relationships to God’s boundaries?

Today, reclaim all of your relationships for advancing the heart of Christ in them. Search for ways to help your friends experience the Spirit of the Restorer. You might even begin studying the Bible with some of them. Focus on how you can apply your relationship with God to your marketplace encounters. In your conversations with your customers, employees, competitors, and vendors, be transparent about your journey on Restoration Road. You will discover that many people are on the same journey you are traveling.

For more, watch: Found with Larry Lance

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What is the true purpose of your relationships? We often leverage connections with our friends, business associates, spouses, and children for our benefit only. John offered a different way, one that would allow the flow of the Holy Spirit into our relationships: “We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves god must also love his brother” (1 John 4:19-21).

God calls us to self-sacrificial love. Today, find someone, anyone in your world, with whom you share part of your time, talent, or treasure to advance the kingdom of Christ. Write a note, meet a need, or give a gift. You will love God through genuinely loving others, bringing His eternal purpose to your relationships.

For more, watch:
Teen Desires with Kelsey Kruse & Ryan Bollier

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Have you compartmentalized God? We often limit God to a particular worship style, in a specific building, during one hour, on a certain day of the week, or even a quiet time, a Bible study, or a small group. Then we take control of the other 167 hours of the week. Mankind has been doing this since the first sin. However, the spiritual was not fashioned for religion, but for relationships. God created a different design for His people, one that allowed the Holy Spirit to saturate all of our hearts all 168 hours a week:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates” (Deuteronomy 6:4-9).

Today, memorize these verses and recite them twice a day, the pattern of its original audience, a pattern that was maintained for millennia. God will release the Holy Spirit in your spiritual life, as you give Him every moment that encapsulates every act as a spiritual one.

For more, watch: Episode 20: Living Water

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What dominates your thoughts? The apostle Paul wrote: “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). The problem is pretense that we can be god in our own lives. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God said, “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Clay holds water.

A heart of clay shows us that we must release the Holy Spirit in our minds. If we continue to rely on our own knowledge, we will watch as another cistern begins to crack as the Living Water escapes. “Taking captive every thought” means that we identify any destructive idea or image in our minds that flows from a licentious sand or legalistic stone cistern of pride. “Making it obedient to Christ” means that we surrender it to Him, experiencing His perspective, His mind, His wisdom. Identifying and surrendering destructive thoughts to the Restorer will transform our emotions that tend to follow our beliefs.

In order to release the water of the Holy Spirit in the clay chamber of your intellect, read the Bible everyday and allow the Word to permeate your thoughts. As you get into the Word, the Word will get into you. You will be empowered to take captive every thought and make it obedient to the Restorer as His Living Water transforms your mind.

For more, watch: Episode 20: Living Water

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What is your outlet? At first, you might describe a hobby or a hideaway, if anything at all, but God designed us to have outlets for His restoration to flow to others.

Everything in the Dead Sea dies because it has no outlet. Contrasted, the Sea of Galilee brings life because its outlet allows it to experience flow. God designed the same for our lives. The apostle Peter wrote: “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (1 Peter 4:10).

A couple decades ago, I was invited to view our local homeless shelter’s new facility. The first person who greeted me was a four year-old girl playing on the floor. She was the same age as my daughter. For the first time in my life, I realized that a child in DeKalb County could be homeless. After my tour, I went back to my office and wrote a check to the shelter that stretched my sacrificial cardiac muscles. I experienced the flow of the Holy Spirit’s water, that day.
When our clay hearts recognize God as the inlet of our financial resources, we seek ways to help those in need.

Today, thank Christ for being your inlet of resources and ask Him for guidance to discover your outlet.

For more, watch:
Episode 20: Living Water

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